Growth
by Windswift
Summary: [Drabbleish, Hiei, Kurama] They're destroying your precious plants.


Disclaimer: YuYu Hakusho belongs to Yoshihiro Togashi

_**Growth**_

"Yukina's been worried."

Below him, the other shrugged and brushed a few strands of hair over his shoulder, letting his neck catch the breeze. "I wonder why."

"She says you've been out here every day this week," he continued. He shifted on the branch to peer through the leaves as the wind stirred them again. From his vantage point, Hiei could see the machines resting quietly on the other side of the field, shimmering slightly in the midday heat.

"So I have."

The cicadas chirped incessantly in the woods behind them. Normally the fox would be sprawled in the shade, goading him about something trivial. But today his gaze fixed unwaveringly out across the expanse of empty dirt.

"And that you haven't come up to the temple once."

"Mm," Kurama replied complacently, "that's so."

Another stray breeze, and his hair shifted alternately from brilliant to dark under the molted shadows as Hiei watched. "And that she isn't upset and hasn't banned you from the temple," he glared down in mild annoyance, "but that I will if you don't stop giving me vague non-answers."

Kurama looked up, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. "Yukina didn't say the last part."

"Hn."

"I see." Dark eyes brightened for an instant before the fox shaded his face against the sun with a hand.

The new construction had cleared the trees all the way to Genkai's property line. The lot hardly compared to the entirety of the old woman's estate, but it looked gapingly out of place, surrounded by old forest on two sides and scrub from earlier abandoned projects on a third. Hiei didn't particularly care what the humans had decided to build, so long as it didn't bother him, and he suspected Genkai had taken a similar attitude to it.

Kurama shouldn't have cared, either.

The fox walked over to the base of the tree. "Tell Yukina I'll drop in later." He smiled up at the other demon, his tone light. "After all, it's very hot today."

"I'm not her messenger," he objected.

"Oh?"

Hiei glared down again. "I was idly curious as to what had captured your attention so thoroughly. Nothing more."

Kurama's expression promised that he was reading every scrap of subtext he could from that statement, so the fire demon snorted and turned back to the dead field.

The buzz of the cicadas died down, halting for a few minutes. A small dust cloud rose from the freshly-overturned earth, but the heat returned as oppressing as ever once the wind stopped. At least, Hiei thought, the fox had gotten some endurance training standing there uselessly each day.

"Does it hurt?"

Kurama looked up suddenly, visibly surprised at the abrupt question. Hiei gestured with a hand and rephrased, "This destruction, does it hurt you?"

Something genuinely warm flickered through green eyes before he teased lightly, "Does it hurt every time we extinguish a match or blow out a candle? Does Yukina hurt every time an ice cube melts?"

"You're an idiot," the fire demon glowered. "That's completely irrelevant. Your forte is living things."

"Ah, I suppose you're right," Kurama agreed quietly. He leaned his head against the tree trunk, his eyes pointed to the sharp line where the grass met bare dirt.

Hiei still couldn't decipher the fox's thoughts, and it annoyed him. It annoyed him to see Kurama acting so enigmatically oddly, it annoyed him to see Yukina worrying thoughtfully over it, and it annoyed him that Kurama didn't bother to fake his normal attitude.

"…So, does it hurt?"

"Not really," Kurama replied, his voice thoughtfully soft. "They're just clearing the way for new growth, even if it is of a different kind."

Hiei shifted on the branch. "They're destroying your precious plants."

"I've destroyed more precious things. And just because I prefer undisturbed forest to metal and glass structures doesn't give me the right to call this the wrong kind of growth." He smiled slightly at other demon. "You have to wait to see the end product before you can judge if the new shoots grew in the right direction. All change is like that."

"Your life has centered on change recently, hasn't it."

The fox absently fingered a lock of his hair, human and not silver. "So it has."

Hiei glanced out at the treeless dirt and the machines for another moment, then dropped lightly from his perch. "Yukina's still worried."

"We can't have that." Kurama pushed away from the tree, his eyes teasing. He brushed his bangs back from his face, and the fire demon could see the damp traces of sweat along his hairline. "Not with someone here being so very determined to make her happy. Almost like a brother…"

"Idiot."

Smiling, Kurama turned away and started back through the woods to the temple.

**…****  
Owari  
…**

_-Windswift_


End file.
